UISGE X - The Judgement Days

At the very first UISGE (2011) 

I just want to share my thoughts after having been part of the jury of the Uisge whisky Festival. The festival has been held annually in my home town Helsinki for the last nine years. This year Uisge will be celebrating its 10th anniversary: Congratulations, that’s quite an achievement knowing the fact that Finnish government’s stand for the alcohol is not so liberal. For example the Uisge whisky festival cannot promote / advertise the event at all due to our country’s strict laws - and still the festival has been sold out for years – thanks to the whisky geeks. Luckily I haven’t missed any Uisge festivals during its ten year path so far. For those who don’t know the history of the Uisge festival, here’s a tiny history lesson: The first Uisge 2011 was held in the Gallows Bird pub in Espoo, since then the venue has been Vanha Ylioppilastalo in the heart of Helsinki city. I think that Vanha is absolutely the best venue that our capital has to offer for such a great event (see the pictures).

Vanha Ylioppilastalo - The venue

This year I was honoured to be a judge for this festival for the second time (as a blogger). The jury consists  of bar professionals, whisky enthusiasts, whisky bloggers etc. The judging itself takes three days in total – do to a vast amount of whisky and spirits to be judged/scored. I participated in the last two days of tastings.  The task itself is colossal. As this was a judging, we had to taste all whiskies in blind, so we could not get any influence in the scores by seeing the bottle labels or even get a hint of the distillery we were about to taste.

46 drams

Mark Watt @ Duncan Taylor
tasting (2012 Uisge)

The day #1 my job was to score Highland region whiskies, 46 whiskies in total from the biggest whisky region in Scotland. After scoring the whiskies (1-10 points) we handed over our scoring sheets to the organizers, and only then we got to see which whiskies we had just tasted/scored. There are always some surprises among the drams, no wonder. I was delighted to notice that I can trust at least a little bit my taste buds as I scored my highest points to drams/distilleries I’ve been a fan of for many years (the Glenlivet, Aberlour…).


My personal favorite of the punch was Aberlour´s A’bunadh, batch#62. Well this is a no brainer that heavily sherried cask strength (and cask strenght whiskies generally) whiskies get the highest scores in blind tastings. If these CS sherry bombs don’t have any clear faults (as heavy unpleasent sulphur etc.) they tend to get higher scores since they have such powerful aromas, both in palate and nose. Don’t get me wrong – of course this doesn’t apply to all sherried whiskies or cask strength whiskies. Naturally great whiskies tend to get decent points. I loved the A’bunadh; I’ve tasted this batch in question earlier and I loved it even back then. My second best points went to the Glenlivet’s Single Cask #19911, 17 yo (55,4%), an absolutely lovely natural cask strength American oak beauty. I have tasted in the past at Uisge festivals many other Glenlivet’s single cask bottllings and to be honest, I’ve loved them all. A little disappointment in the lineup was the Balvenie’s ”A Day of Dark Barley”, no particular reasons why, it just wasn’t my thing.I also scored pretty high marks to Glenallachie’s (10 yo, 12 yo, 18 yo) & Glenburgie’s whiskies (15 & 18 yo) & Tamdhu’s Batch Strength, batch #4, 57,8%.

Highland Park guitar on the
hands of Martin Markvardsen

Day #2 was the day to score the best of the best whiskies from each category winners which got the highest scores the earlier days of judging (Highland, Islands, Islay, American whiskies, Irish whiskies, Nordic whiskies, Lowlands & Blends), eight whiskies in total to put in order. This was no walk in the park either as there were quite narrow margins, but after an hour and a half my rankings were done. However the tastings were not over yet for the day: the day’s last task was to score Nordic gins, 14 in total. Again - not an easy job.However, separating the wheat from the chaff had to be done. Among these gins were clearly some excellent, some average and some not so good gins, therefore scoring them was a surprisingly easy job. In cas
e you’re interested in my scores - Helsinki Distillery Company’s Rhubarb gin (42%) got my highest marks followed by Spirit of Hven’s Organic Navy Strenght Gin (57,1%).

So that’s all folks, see you at the Uisge X on 7-8 February 2020!

Aberlour pic - Master of Malt
The Glenlivet pic - Alko
Other pics © WhiskyBloke
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